Although the name Wofgang Amadeus Mozart rings more than a few bells in the heads of the general populace, the name Lorenzo Da Ponte usually brings nothing but blank stares.

Da Ponte provided the texts for Mozart's best-known operas but he has never achieved the fame and recognition of his professional significant other.

That is . . . until now.

The organizers of this weekend's Da Ponte Symposium are hoping to shed some light on the career of Mozart's favorite librettist, who wrote the lyrics to such classical works as Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro.

With a number of lectures by Da Ponte scholars and a concert by the Pennsylvania Centre Chamber Orchestra, the symposium will examine Da Ponte's life both in Vienna and America. After his 1805 arrival in America, Da Ponte eventually formed the nation's first Italian studies program at Columbia University and established the first home for Italian opera in New York City.

Chuck Ungar, a senior producer/director at WPSX-TV, has been a major impetus in creating a forum to analyze Da Ponte's contributions. An avid Mozart fan, Ungar became interested in Da Ponte's work when he discovered that the librettist once resided in nearby Sunbury, where he sold dry goods for several years.

"I couldn't believe it," Ungar said. "One of the greatest librettists who ever lived resided for a time in Sunbury, yet there was nothing there to commemorate that fact."

After some discussions with the Northumberland County Historical Society, Ungar persuaded it to establish a historical marker in Sunbury, which was unveiled last October. Now with the symposium, which is sponsored by the University's Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, Ungar promises a more in-depth look at Da Ponte's life.

"If establishing the marker in Sunbury was the celebration side of all this, then this weekend will be the evaluation side of it," Ungar said. "Not to say that there won't be any celebrating this weekend, but what will be happening is an attempt to appraise what Da Ponte did."

Paul Lawrence Rose, a professor of European History at the University, said that Da Ponte's flamboyant character probably appealed to Mozart.

"When you're dealing with the operas, you're talking about psychological studies in a rather comedic form," Rose said. "The music has a very smooth surface with deeper disturbances beneath, which is inherent not only in the music but the lyrics also."

In a recent interview on WPSU-FM, Professor Daniel L. Heartz, a music professor from the University of California at Berkeley, said that Da Ponte's lyrics were very important to the outcome of the operas.

"Mozart never encountered anyone with as much skill in versifying and writing beautiful poetry," Heartz said. "Mozart had some very good librettists but no one achieved what Da Ponte did."

The symposium will also include the unveiling of a number of recently discovered documents Da Ponte wrote to his lawyer. Although the documents are not of any great musical significance, they do provide a glimpse of Da Ponte and his handwriting, handwriting that also penned the lyrics to some of the world's greatest operas.

"One of the things we're trying to do this weekend is to reevaluate the role of the librettist in the success of the opera," Ungar said. "With Da Ponte, we're also looking at the contributions he made in this country."

"To have two different but equally distinguished careers on either side of the Atlantic Ocean is pretty incredible," Ungar added.